VATICAN CITY – The Vatican's rehabilitation of liberation theology is continuing under Pope Francis with the movement's founder appearing at an official Vatican event next week.

The Peruvian theologian the Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez will be one of the main speakers at a major gathering of the Vatican's charity arm, Caritas Internationalis, and will appear at a Vatican press conference Tuesday.

Liberation theology is the Latin American-inspired Catholic theology advocating for the poor. The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spent much of his quarter-century tenure at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith battling liberation theology and disciplining some of its most famous defenders, arguing that they had misinterpreted Jesus' preference for the poor into a Marxist call for armed rebellion.

Gutierrez was never sanctioned, but his stature has grown since Francis' election.